Gendy nooch, cozzie livs, tiger toast, password child and murder noodle.

These are the words of the month, which Macquarie Dictionary is considering making the 2023 Word of the Year and possibly including in their next edition.

Some of the words have been submitted by the public and this month the dictionary is calling for more new word submissions.

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https://twitter.com/MacqDictionary/status/1648861592421801987?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

According to the dictionary, the term gendy nooch is a shortening of gender-neutral, which means something not relating or specific to a particular gender.

Cozzie livs has quickly become slang for the rising cost of living, which is affecting most Australians this year.

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Another new phrase is tiger toast, which refers to "toast with a topping of Vegemite and strips of cheese" according to the dictionary.

Password child is another new phrase meaning "a child favoured over their siblings, as shown by the use of their name in the parent's passwords".

The final top pick for April words of the month is murder noodle, which refers to "a snake, especially one that is venomous".

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The 2022 Word of the Year was Teal, defined by the dictionary as "a political candidate who holds generally ideologically moderate views, but who supports strong action regarding environmental and climate action policies, and the prioritising of integrity in politics (so called as many of the candidates use the colour teal in their electoral material).

Last year's people's choice word was bachelor's handbag, referring to the plastic bag containing a takeaway roast chicken often purchased from supermarkets.

You can submit a word to the dictionary or vote for any of these words to be included here.

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From construction giants like Porter Davis to smaller start-ups like Milkrun and retailers like luxury fashion brand Alice McCall, the rate of businesses going under is rising but experts warn it is only going to get worse.

A recent analysis by NAB shows there has been a bounce back in businesses collapsing with a huge 30 per cent rise in insolvencies in 2022 after a slowdown during the COVID-19 pandemic.

But with economic headwinds placing pressure on Aussie consumers and businesses alike, experts are worried there will be a far higher rise in collapses in 2023 as companies face a looming recession.

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Various industries are being impacted by the insolvency rebound with construction collapses jumping by 28 per cent, accommodation and food services by 14 per cent and retail trade by 7 per cent.

There are different causes for industry collapses with construction impacted by supply chain issues and rising building costs, visitor levels not returning to pre-pandemic levels being a blight on accommodation and discretionary spending slowing for retailers.

Is the rise in insolvencies right now a bad thing?

The rise in insolvencies right now might not be a bad thing for Australia, insolvency experts claim.

Insolvency firm Jirsch Sutherland's managing partner Bradd Morelli told 9news.com.au this backlog is "zombie companies" which are businesses that should have been shut down or restructured two years ago but faced no pressure to and now the Australian Taxation Office is cracking down.

"We saw smaller businesses that needed to go but no one was pushing pressure on them so they could stick their head in the sand," he said.

"We're starting to see a rise in larger businesses that have ATO challenges, that's leading to the increase in voluntary administration and restructurings."

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Morelli said it was a process of "weeding out the weak" businesses at the moment as we see the murmurings of a global recession, which Australia is not expected to escape this time, which will impact more companies.

"You need these mild downturns because what that does is flushes out the cowboys and flushes out the guys on the margins and gets rid of people who might be underquoting," he said.

"Some of the better businesses, although they might have challenges as the market slows down, they'll come out stronger."

He said businesses that are "no good" – meaning they aren't paying taxes, superannuation or struggle to pay clients or staff – are not good for the Australian economy.

"Guys that hang on are a drain on the economy," he said.

So instead of thinking about the current rise in insolvencies as a blight on the Australian economy, Morelli said it can reallocate assets from unproductive to productive businesses to strengthen the market.

Cost of living crisis could cause 'good' businesses to go under

However, the insolvency landscape is transitioning as cost of living pressures weigh down and experts forecast "good" or successful businesses will be tested and may fail at the end of the year – meaning yet another rise in collapses.

Morelli warned relentless interest rate rises, inflation and supply chain issues are starting to change consumer behaviour leading to another rise in collapses by the end of this year.

"I think that will lead to another big increase in the number of insolvencies at a personal and corporate level," Morelli said.

He said Aussies will start to tighten their purses and no longer go out for date night or to the pub but hospitality businesses and retailers will feel the consequences of the consumer behaviour changes.

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Australian Retail Association (ARA) CEO Paul Zahra said the tide is turning for the retail sector as a tough economic environment bears down.

"What we're seeing now is a slow down in discretionary spending and shoppers are saving every dollar where you can," he said.

Zahra said in good times "sales hide all evils" but in tough times companies get tested and have to bring costs down but some companies don't survive.

"We're seeing a real collision between the cost of living crisis and the cost of doing business crisis," he said.

"You have to expect there will be more collapses occur but sadly it is small businesses particularly that are under significant pressure because they have thinner margins to operate."

What can we do about it?

There's some harsh advice from Morelli for businesses struggling to balance the books and fear liquidation is knocking on their door as cost of living pressures bear down.

"Have cash flows and monitor them and be prepared to make changes," he said.

"If people have to let a couple of staff go it can be a hard decision but make that decision.

"Businesses hang on to people but at the end of the day the businesses fail because of that."

Zahra said it is likely the unemployment rate will go up like the Reserve Bank of Australia has forecast from the current historically low rate of 3.5 per cent to 4.5 per cent by June 2025.

But even if people get let go there are still more than 36,000 vacancies in the retail and hospitality sector to snap people up after the COVID-19 pandemic drove foreign workers away due to the harsh border restrictions.

He said there's no simple answer to what businesses can do to survive the rising economic turbulence.

In terms of interest rates, the ARA wants the central bank to be conscious of its decisions but at the end of the day, the bank has its own priorities – inflation.

Zahra said businesses need to have a unique value proposition and a sustainable business model to survive financial hardship.

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The information provided on this website is general in nature only and does not constitute personal financial advice. The information has been prepared without taking into account your personal objectives, financial situation or needs. Before acting on any information on this website you should consider the appropriateness of the information having regard to your objectives, financial situation and needs.

A married couple shot their daughter's former partner four times and left him to die after a far from amicable divorce and custody tensions, a court has been told.

Nolene June Jordan and Cedric Harper Jordan have pleaded not guilty to murdering Shane Barker, 36, at his home in Campbell Town in Tasmania on August 2, 2009.

The pair were charged in May 2020 following an extensive police investigation.

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During opening submissions on Friday, Crown Prosecutor Daryl Coates said the Jordans hated Barker and wanted him out of the life of their daughter, Rachel.

He said the couple left their house with a .22-calibre rifle at 6pm to travel to Barker's home.

Coates said Barker went to shut the gate on his property when he was shot three times in the back and once when he was laying on the ground.

Barker and Rachel had a daughter together and there was a "continual source of frustration" surrounding his access to her, Coates said.

Rachel was also unhappy about a proposed financial settlement with Barker, the court was told.

"The separation not (being) an amicable one was an understatement," Coates told the Supreme Court of Tasmania in Launceston.

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Coates said it was the Crown's case the Jordans had "had enough" and formed an agreement to kill Barker.

"(They) went to Barker's house where they shot him and left him to die," he said.

It was highly likely Jordan pulled the trigger because he was an experienced shooter who owned guns and ammunition, Coates said.

Barker earlier in the evening had dinner with his parents before returning home with an empty biscuit tin and some ironed shirts, he added.

His body was found by police in the hallway of his home.

Coates said a lack of disturbance to the property pointed to a premeditated killing by somebody who knew where he lived.

Opening submissions in the trial, which is expected to run for several months, continue.

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A pregnant mum-to-be has called for action over e-bikes after being so badly hurt in a hit-and-run in the Sydney CBD she was in hospital for nearly two months.

Sarah Briscoe-Hough, 35, from Neutral Bay, was heading to catch a bus after watching some of the Mardi Gras parade in Sydney in February.

Because she is pregnant, she left early to get away from the crowds.

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But just moments before reaching her bus stop near Wynyard station, Briscoe-Hough was hit by an e-bike, a motorised bicycle.

She needed multiple surgeries on her shattered right foot and elbow and was in hospital for seven weeks.

But the culprits, who she said were two men on a Lime e-bike, had fled by the time police arrived.

She wants to see more legislation to protect pedestrians from what she called "dangerous" bikes.

"If you're going to have something that goes at certain kilometres an hour, it needs to be with an adult," she told 9news.com.au.

"It's very silly to use it in heavily populated areas like the CBD.

"They're just using it like a normal bike – it's not a normal bike.

"I would absolutely hate for this to happen to anybody else."

Hit while crossing road

The executive assistant said she was crossing George Street to reach her stop at Wynyard Park at around 8.30pm on the evening she was hit.

A tram had just passed and she said there was no other traffic, so she started to cross.

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She can't remember if she used a pedestrian crossing or not.

But after stepping out, Briscoe-Hough can recall seeing the bike, with two men on it, speeding towards her.

They shouted at her to move – but she knew she wouldn't have time.

"All I heard was, 'Get out of the way,'" she said.

"When I looked, it registered, 'I'm not going to make it'. I thought, 'Just don't bump this belly.'"

Briscoe-Hough was hit by the e-bike, with her right side slamming into the road as she tried to protect her pregnant stomach.

Strangers rushed to help, and she recalls one of the two men who had been on the bike talking to her.

"I remember as I was falling I saw them come off the bike – they would have hurt themselves too. They were flying, they were going so fast," she said.

"One sort of staggered towards me and asked if I was ok.

"I was just in pain, I didn't really notice what they were doing."

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She was taken by ambulance to the nearby Sydney Eye Hospital and later transferred to St George Hospital.

Briscoe-Hough needed surgery on her foot, which was shattered and dislocated.

Pins, plates and screws were used to repair her foot bones, as well as her elbow.

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She also needed skin grafts on her foot because her skin blistered from the huge swelling.

Police have confirmed they are investigating the incident.

"About 8.30pm on Saturday 25 February 2023, a 35-year-old woman was walking along George Street Sydney near the intersection of Hunter Street when she crossed George Street from the eastern footpath to the western footpath," NSW Police told 9news.com.au.

"A male riding a Lime hire bicycle with another male sitting on the handlebars struck the woman as she crossed the road.

"The bike rider allegedly rode off without rendering aid to the woman.

"The woman was treated at the scene by NSW Ambulance paramedics before being taken to hospital for further treatment for leg injuries."

What are e-bike rules?

In NSW, power-assisted pedal cycles and electrically power-assisted cycles are legal and e-bikes cannot exceed speeds of 25km/h.

Petrol-powered bikes, bikes powered by internal combustion, or using an electric engine to propel the bike are illegal.

Personal electric scooters, skateboards and hoverboards are also banned.

9news.com.au has contacted e-bike company Lime, which offers e-bikes for hire on the street, for comment.

It says on its website riders should be over 18.

It also said its vehicles "have their speeds capped and won't allow you to go dangerously fast".

'Everything at once' for single mum-to be

Meanwhile, Briscoe-Hough has found out her baby will need open heart surgery for a congenital heart defect called tetralogy of Fallot when it is born.

The complication isn't related to the accident but it means as well as still recovering from her injuries when giving birth in August, she'll have to contend with taking care of a sick baby.

She is also set to be a single mother as she is no longer in a relationship with the baby's father.

"It's just everything all at once," she said.

Briscoe-Hough is raising money to pay bills as she's currently unable to work.

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A crystal hunter in Canada couldn't believe her luck when what she thought was a stone turned out to be a fossiled shark tooth belonging to an ancestor of the megalodon, one of the largest carnivores to ever live.

Rachel Shill Cook was rock-hunting with her stepdaughter Addison along Nechako River, west of Prince George in British Columbia when she made the discovery.

Cook told 9news.com.au an ancient shark tooth is the last thing they expected to find in the frozen wild.

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"We decided to spend some time down by the nearby river to look for agates," she said.

"With spring finally in full swing, we thought we could take advantage of the low water level to see if we could find anything interesting.

"We noticed what we thought was an interesting stone so I went to the riverbed to dig it out. That's when we noticed it wasn't a rock at all. Addison and I stared at it and we made a comment that it looked like a shark tooth.

"Only bigger than anything we have ever seen before."

Cook posted their find to The Fossil Forum where users identified it as an Otodus obliquus tooth.

The species is the oldest ancestor of the megalodon.

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Megalodons were colossal sharks that lived an estimated 23 million to 2.6 million years ago.

From nose to tail they are said to have measured around 16 metres.

Teeth from the otodus obliquus are typically found in Morocco, which makes Cook's find a rare one indeed.

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"I have had theories given to me about it getting lost as a trinket with a local indigenous tribe from long ago. Or, I had a paleontologist tell me that although Central BC was never under ocean water it could have hitched a ride on a glacier thousands of years ago," she said.

"Those are my two personal favorite theories.

"I'm sure there are many more. Needless to say, this new area Addison and I found will likely be our new favourite place for the remainder of the year."

Cook said the find has well eclipsed any crystal she has ever found.

"The tooth has certainly set the bar pretty high now so looking for pretty rocks might not have the same excitement it used to," she said.

"But it's not going to stop us from looking."

She's now considering what to do with the ancient find. 

"We aren't quite sure what we will be doing with it," Cook said.

"I've had a few collectors reach out offering to give it a new forever home, or perhaps it will go to a museum for others to enjoy.

"Addison wants to display it in our home for our friends and family to enjoy, so time will tell what the next chapter of the tooth will be."



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A German court says it has decided not to hear a sex offences case against a man who also is a suspect in the disappearance of British toddler Madeleine McCann.

The court on Thursday argued the region where it is located isn't the last place he lived in Germany and so it isn't responsible.

Prosecutors in the northern city of Braunschweig in October charged the German suspect in his mid-40s in several separate cases involving sexual offences allegedly committed in Portugal between 2000 and 2017.

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The suspect hasn't been charged in the McCann case, in which he is under investigation on suspicion of murder.

He spent many years in Portugal, including in the resort of Praia da Luz around the time of Madeleine's disappearance there in 2007. He has denied any involvement in her disappearance.

The suspect, who has been identified by media as Christian Brueckner, is currently serving a seven-year prison sentence in Germany for a rape he committed in Portugal in 2005.

In the German legal system, a court must decide after it receives an indictment from prosecutors whether to take a case to trial.

The Braunschweig state court said its supposed responsibility for the case being in the area had been based on his last residence before going abroad and then to prison.

But it said that isn't valid, because the suspect produced evidence of a later residence in the neighbouring state of Saxony-Anhalt, where he was registered as the owner of a property that he kept after going abroad.

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The court said that, as a result of its decision, it has lifted a new arrest warrant it issued for the suspect in November. It said in a statement that this has no influence on the suspect's serving of his current sentence.

It said that its decision can be appealed to a higher court in Braunschweig.

Prosecutors said later Thursday that they will examine the reasons for the decision carefully and then likely appeal.

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The Earth's ice sheets lost enough ice over the last 30 years to create an ice cube 19 kilometres high, according to new research.

The Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, which hold almost all of the world's freshwater ice, are shrinking at a frighteningly rapid pace, according to a report on Thursday from a team of international scientists.

Combining data from 50 satellite surveys of Antarctica and Greenland, spanning the years 1992 to 2020, scientists from the Ice Sheet Mass Balance Inter-comparison Exercise, or IMBIE, were able to track changes in the ice sheets' volume and ice flow.

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They found that ice sheet melting has increased six-fold over the past 30 years, as record levels of planet-heating pollution push up global temperatures.

The seven worst years for polar ice sheet melting all happened during the past decade.

In all, the polar ice sheets lost more than 7.5 trillion tonnes of ice between 1992 and 2020, according to the report.

The worst year for ice sheet loss was 2019, the report found, when the ice sheets lost around 612 billion tonnes of ice. These losses were driven by an Arctic heatwave, which saw Greenland's ice sheet shed 444 billion tonnes.

The loss of ice is having a significant impact on the oceans, pushing up sea levels by 21 millimetres, according to the report. Ice sheet melting now accounts for a quarter of all sea level rise — a five-fold increase since the 1990s.

"This is a huge amount of ice," study lead author Inès Otosaka, a research fellow at the University of Leeds, told CNN.

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"This is very worrying, of course, because 40 per cent of the global population lives in coastal areas."

Scientists found that the rate at which the Antarctic ice sheet is melting has slowed, but remains much faster than in the 1990s.

The report identified the Antarctic Peninsula and West Antarctica — the location of the troubled Thwaites Glacier, nicknamed the "Doomsday" glacier for its potentially devastating impact on sea level rise — as the regions where most of the continent's melt was happening.

Otosaka expects the Greenland ice sheet to continue losing ice, but said it's not yet clear what might happen to the Antarctic ice sheet.

"In Antarctica we have higher uncertainty in the future," she said.

"We have what we call some low-probability but high-impact mechanisms that could be triggered if we exceed a certain level of warming."

That could lead to a much higher sea level rise in the future, she added.

If the world hits certain warming thresholds, it could trigger important and potentially irreversible feedback mechanisms, Otosaka said.

"We really need to have strong governmental policies to limit future warming and to cut our greenhouse gas concentration," she added.

The European Space Agency, which along with NASA helps fund IMBIE's research, said in a statement: "It is without doubt that climate change is causing our polar ice sheets to melt, thereby driving up sea levels and putting coastal regions around the world at risk."

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Scientists at IMBIE plan to update the assessment every year.

"We are finally at the stage where we can continuously update our assessments of ice sheet mass balance as there are enough satellites in space monitoring them, which means that people can make use of our findings immediately," Andrew Shepherd, a professor at Northumbria University and founder of IMBIE, said in a statement.

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A woman and her teenage son have survived a light plane crashing into the ocean in front of horrified witnesses in Western Australia.

The 45-year-old pilot and her 15-year-old son swam about 50 metres to shore after the crash at Leighton Beach just after 5pm (7pm AEST).

The mother and son were on their way to Jandakot Airport from Exmouth after viewing the solar eclipse when the plane started going down from a suspected mechanical failure. 

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It is understood the mother forced a water landing after realising the aircraft's issue. 

"Its a scary incident for them, but the pilot did an exceptional job bringing it down," WA Police Inspector Mark Cannon said.

"We are close to a lot of public buildings so they did very well to put it down where they did."

Police confirmed there was no fuel spillage from the crash.

At first police believed the plane was a Cessna O-1 Bird Dog, its now been confirmed to be a Piper Cherokee.

Witnesses said they watched as the plane crashed.

"Mum was shouting saying, 'that plane is nose diving', by the time I turned around the plane just hit the water," one witness told 9News.

The mother was taken to hospital for treatment while the boy was treated at the scene by paramedics.

Police confirmed the pair were in a stable condition.

The plane is now completely submerged underwater. 

Police have begun investigations into the crash, and have begun trying to secure the plane to lift it out of the water.

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The 31-year-old will be ‘greatly missed’ by her work colleagues.

Not completing Census forms can result in a $2000 fine.